Various forms of dental prosthetics, such as so-called "false teeth" have been around of hundreds of years. Many American school children learn that President George Washington wore 18th century dentures which were often ill fitting and which are displayed today at his Mount Vernon home in Alexandria, Va.
Twentieth century examples of dental prosthetics, such as dentures and individual prosthetic teeth are known from the following United States Patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,657 to Koukos PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,291 to Davis et al. PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 1,899,521 to Nudell PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,251,910 to Barnhart PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,431,330 to Cornell PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,024,637 to Colpitts PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,431,420 to Adair PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,470,815 to Hazar PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,681,543 to Monroy PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,521,193 to Cialone PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,304,063 to Ginsburg PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,403,186 to Ginsburg PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,711,668 to Huestis
However, even the most recent known methods of forming dental prostheses and dentures manufactured thereby have significant drawbacks.
Such drawbacks include, in the case of dentures, for example, that a patient must return as many as six (6) to eight (8) times for follow-up appointments in order to have the dentist reshape and reconfigure the denture so that it seats properly in the patient's mouth and feels correct to the patient. Thus, not only are such dentures poor replacements for the patient's existing worn ("old") dentures which must be replaced, but such replacement ("new") dentures often do not feel "right" to the patient.
The multiple return visits to the dentist office are not only annoying to the paying customer, the patient, but also cost the dentist time and money, reduce patient confidence in the dentist, and, occasionally, one losses the patient's patronage.
Other drawbacks of improperly fitting dentures, for example, include patient discomfort, patient dissatisfaction, improperly fitting dentures which tend to move in the patient's mouth and become dislodged, thus impairing the patient's speech and necessitating the use of denture adhesives to compensate for the poor fit, and even a refusal of the patient to wear the ill-fitting dentures.